Because of the evergreen stink of gin I got a face full of whenever my daddy kissed me good night: Just a little sugar from my honeybee.

Because he drank from a flask he stashed in his jacket and told me bedtime stories about his own bad daddy: Ham fists, fingers twinkling with rings he won selling cars. Voice like a hemi engine, zero to sixty in the time it took to slam a door. You don’t know hurt ‘til you get a fist full of silver.

Because a lullaby can be sticky as dried pine gum.

Because they die.

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006.